On Jan. 24, 1990, the New York Times (
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"Prado Opens the Largest Show Of Velazquez's Work Ever Held
By ALAN RIDING, Special to The New York Times
Published: January 25, 1990
MADRID, Jan. 24— In the presence of King Juan Carlos and with more than a nod of gratitude for help provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Prado Museum this week opened the largest exhibition of paintings by Velazquez ever held.
The core of the exhibition is the Prado's own collection of 48 works by the Spanish master whose portraits of King Philip IV and his court and of the peasants of Madrid captured the essence of 17th-century society, both high and low. Thirty-one other paintings have been lent by museums in the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Austria and elsewhere in Spain.
''This is quite simply unique,'' Alfonso Perez Sanchez, the director of the Prado, said. ''This will be very difficult to repeat because it is the result of very complex favorable circumstances. To have thought of doing this even two years ago would have been a dream.''
The Inspiration
The Prado's initiative was inspired by the Metropolitan's own highly successful Velazquez exhibition, which was seen by more than 550,000 visitors from late September through Jan. 7 this year and was the first major exhibition devoted exclusively to Velazquez.
But while 38 works were on display in New York, including 17 lent by the Prado, this exhibition has 79 of the approximately 100 that are known to exist, including many major works that were not at the Metropolitan. Perhaps a score of Velazquez's works are thought to have been lost.
''Velazquez was a painter of very limited production,'' Mr. Perez Sanchez said. ''First, he was lazy. He took a long time to finish his works and he painted little. But he was also an employee of the royal palace and had lots of other duties.''
Only 2 Major Gaps
Only two of his best-known masterpieces were not sent to Madrid - ''Innocent X'' in Rome's Doria-Pamphili Gallery and ''Prince Felipe Prospero'' at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. But ''The Rokeby Venus,'' his magical nude with a mirror, which was not seen in New York, was lent by the National Gallery in London. And two extraordinary portraits painted during Velazquez's second visit to Italy in 1650 are also on display in Spain for the first time -''Juan de Pareja,'' the Metropolitan's great Velazquez, came from New York, while ''Monsignor Camillo Massimi'' was lent by Britain's National Trust.
The success of the Prado's exhibition, which lasts until March 30, is nonetheless assured by the museum's own collection, comprising not only a full range of royal portraits of the ruling Hapsburgs but also several of the masterpieces that did not travel to New York, among them ''The Surrender of Breda'' and ''The Feast of Bacchus.''
The Role of the Met
The Prado's jewel, ''Las Meninas,'' is another Velazquez certain never to be lent abroad. It was restored in 1984 under the direction of John M. Brealey, the Met's chairman of conservation, and it has a place of honor in this show.
What makes this exhibition particularly special is that the Met helped to establish the connections with other museums that made it easier for the Prado to borrow almost all the paintings that were shown in New York. This is a tribute to years of close collaboration between the Met and the Prado.
''We worked together on the Zurbaran and Goya exhibitions at the Met and it was always Philippe de Montebello's dream to do a Velazquez show,'' Mahrukh Tarapor, the Met's assistant director, said of the museum's director. ''We had the wonderfully fortuitous circumstances of the Prado opening up to the international art world.''
'An Immense Luxury'
Mr. Brealey, who came here for this week's opening despite delicate health, also played a key role in sealing the relationship between the two museums during his work restoring ''Las Meninas'' and helping establish the Prado's own conservation department.
''It was in a spirit of open friendship that the idea of the Velazquez exhibition was born,'' Ms. Tarapor recalled. ''We would have been happy to have shown 10 Velazquezes, and in the end we had 38. To come here and see 79 is, of course, an immense luxury.''
The agreement between the two museums was that in exchange for 17 Velazquezes from the Prado and one from the Escorial Palace, the Met would arrange to bring as much of its exhibition as possible here. ''This exhibition is possible thanks to the experience of the Met,'' Mr. Perez Sanchez said. ''The name of the Prado then helped bring other paintings.''
Show Is Crowded
Museum officials said they had to close the doors to the exhibition several times to prevent more than 500 people from being in the nine rooms housing the works at any one time. In the first five hours of the show, more than 4,000 people viewed it.
For the Prado, which expects some 800,000 visitors, the exhibition is the latest effort in its difficult struggle to overcome the stigma of the neglect it suffered during the long years of the Franco dictatorship.
While the Velazquez exhibitions here and in New York have been sponsored by Spain's Banco Hispano Americano, Government money has also enabled the Prado to continue to restore its galleries. In recent months rooms devoted to Goya and El Greco, for example, have been refurbished.
But no less important, like Spain, the Prado has now ended years of international isolation. ''Luckily, Alfonso Perez Sanchez saw the world was eager to know what had been happening all those years when Spain was not part of the mainstream,'' Ms. Tarapor said."